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Glass annealing lehr controls retrofit — 18% less gas, +6% yield
Building Products•2024•West Virginia, USA

Glass annealing lehr controls retrofit — 18% less gas, +6% yield

Burner control and thermal-profile retrofit on a specialty glass annealing lehr.

Client
Confidential — Specialty Glass Maker
Location
West Virginia, USA
Capabilities
Retrofit & Upgrades · Service & Support
−18%
Natural gas usage
+6%
Annealed yield
5 wk
Cutover outage

The challenge

30-year-old lehr ran on pneumatic burner control with manual setpoints, drifting thermal profile, and a 12% breakage rate after annealing. Energy costs were rising and the plant lacked engineers who could tune the existing controls.

What we built

Replaced pneumatic burner controls with Honeywell ControlEdge PLC + ThermoPro burner management, added 32 thermocouples for a continuous thermal map, and stood up a recipe HMI tied to the glass type. Phased the cutover so the lehr never went cold.

Key equipment

  • Honeywell ControlEdge PLC
  • ThermoPro burner management
  • Type K thermocouples ×32
  • Ignition SCADA dashboard

From the floor

Illustrative image — representative of project scope; customer-identifying details have been removed.

Glass annealing lehr controls retrofit — 18% less gas, +6% yield — 1
Glass annealing lehr controls retrofit — 18% less gas, +6% yield — 2
Glass annealing lehr controls retrofit — 18% less gas, +6% yield — 3

Results

Gas use down 18%, post-anneal breakage down to 6%, and the plant gained the operator-facing HMI it never had to tune the lehr without external help.

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